Upcoming Feral Druid Changes in Patch 7.3

We haven't seen a ton of class changes on the Patch 7.3 PTR yet, but Blizzard has just announced some major updates are in store for Feral Druids including a 33% damage increase.\r\rThese changes are aimed at talent balance, reducing how punishing the rotation is, and addressing how talents scale with baseline damage increases to the spec. Some abilities are buffed and nerfed, while other talents are swapping rows completely such as Savage Roar moved to lvl 90 row. (from lvl 75 row).\r\rHi Cats,\r\rWe have a number of changes to Feral Druids coming soon. The general goals of these changes are:\r\r\r 1. Reduce (but not necessarily displace entirely) the dominance of the big three complexifying and powerful talents: Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds, and Bloodtalons. Each of those talents is (on live) winning by a large margin in terms of throughput against other talents on their rows.\r 2. Balance out the power level of the last 3 talent rows, allowing more talents builds to be viable.\r 3. Increase the skill floor and reduce how punishing it can be to error when playing the rotation.\r 4. Compensate for power-level-reductions of talents with baseline damage increase to the spec so that at the highest level, performance isn't really affected, but the bottom of the spec is brought up.\r\rThe most major changes:\r\r\r All damage done increased by 33%.\rJagged Wounds reduced to 20%. (down from 33%)\rSavage Roar duration increased by 50% at all combo points. Damage bonus reduced to 15%. (down from 25%)\rBloodtalons damage bonus reduced to 25%. (down from 50%)\r\rLooking back at the development of Feral Druid in Legion: when Savage Roar was moved from a baseline ability to the talent tree, in order to bring the power level of the ability closer to most talents (+25% damage to everything for a long duration is far stronger than most talents are), rather than reducing its damage bonus, its duration was significantly shortened instead. This contributed greatly to the overconstrained and overly punishing Feral rotation that you see on live today. Additionally, Jagged Wounds was added as a new talent, reducing the amount of free combo points Ferals had available to finishers such as (which was basically pushed out of the rotation entirely). Both talents probably would have been fine on their own, but taken together (because they were the strongest) at the live tuning values led to a more pressured Feral rotation than we felt was right.\r\rAdditionally, a few talents are being rearranged in the talent tree:\r\r\rJagged Wounds moved to lvl 75 row. (from lvl 90 row)\rSavage Roar moved to lvl 90 row. (from lvl 75 row)\rBrutal Slash moved to lvl 90 row. (from lvl 100 row)\rElune's Guidance moved to lvl 100 row. (from lvl 90 row)\r\rThe primary gain here is moving Brutal Slash to a sort of multitarget\/AOE lvl 90 talent row along with Sabertooth (which can be well-utilized in a sustained low-target situation), giving the lvl 90 row a solid talent for dungeons. For now, we want to go with an arrangement that keeps Jagged Wounds, Savage Roar, and Bloodtalons on separate rows so the current most common live build is still possible.\r\rOther less major changes include quality of life and tuning adjustments to some talents to balance out the rows:\r\r\rProwl cooldown reduced to 6 sec (down from 10 sec) for all Druid specs.\rRebirth is castable in all forms, and consequently, is no longer affected by or consumes Predatory Swiftness.\rSabertooth damage bonus to increased to 20%.\rIncarnation: King of the Jungle energy cost reduction reduced to 50% (down from 60%) and only allows the use of Prowl once. This it to balance out that talent row with the new Jagged Wounds and to reduce the frequency of Rake stuns in PvP while still allowing Incarnation: King of the Jungle to function as an effective Vanish.\rMoment of Clarity now causes Omen of Clarity to trigger twice as often and increases the damage of the affected abilities by 25%. This is to better space out what is essentially a large energy proc and reduce slightly the impact that a single talent has on the resource income and pacing of the rotation.\rElune's Guidance cooldown reduced to 30 sec (down from 45 sec) and combo points granted reduced to 5 + 5 over 5 seconds (down from 5 + 8 over 8 seconds).\r\rOverall, with these changes, balance for the last 3 talent rows and consequently overall should be better in general. We expect the current most common build\/playstyle of Jagged Wounds + Savage Roar + Bloodtalons to still remain one of the strongest builds, but it should no longer win by a huge margin over other competing talent builds and also should be a little less strenuous to play.\r\rThese changes should be available in an upcoming PTR build. As usual, we may make further adjustments \u2013 especially tuning \u2013 as PTR progresses.

Comments

Comment by Vanory

Im at a loss for words. I posted a comment on the AMA thread about these things and how they need to be adressed, and to see this response, all I can say is good job.

Comment by TheAmadaun

on 2017-07-07T13:51:05-05:00

Wonderful. I had meant to play my druid as Feral, but the current rotation kicked my ass up and down.

Comment by Chilela

on 2017-07-07T13:57:53-05:00

This checks off just about every suggestion I've popped in some way or form. Was hoping Renewal would become baseline and get replaced with a talent that reduced the cooldown of Dash or something, but that was a very minor change. Nice-looking changes overall.

Comment by Xeneonic

on 2017-07-07T13:58:27-05:00

Im at a loss for words. I posted a comment on the AMA thread about these things and how they need to be adressed, and to see this response, all I can say is good job.\r\rIt is just a damn shame how long it takes for these things to make it to Live. 7.3 is at least 2 months away; on top of how long Feral have been struggling with this, it's starting to get quite ludicrous.\r\rI mean we're not just damage tuning here, we're tuning how the spec behaves and plays. It has been this uncomfortable for a long time now. They're really fine with tuning things on live quite often as well (look at start of 7.2.5 or start of 7.2.0) so why this has to take this long is beyond me.\r\r\rIt's like they gather only once every week where they discuss one spec in particular, so if your spec comes up as 25th, yeah, good luck with that.\r\rFeral is not the first one and not the last.\r\rAll I can say is shame on Blizzard.

Comment by Nytim

on 2017-07-07T14:10:55-05:00

Honestly Im happy with these changes... But like Xeneonic said, why did they took so long? Arms was way better than feral and they "reworked" it sooner... A good step on helping us ASAP, was to maintain the original 8 secs of Rip duration on the T20 4P bonus. I never understood why they changed THAT value. I would gladly lose 5% out of the 10% to have the 8 secs back... Better late than never I guess :)

Comment by DomGF

on 2017-07-07T14:27:28-05:00

Im at a loss for words. I posted a comment on the AMA thread about these things and how they need to be adressed, and to see this response, all I can say is good job.\r\rIt is just a damn shame how long it takes for these things to make it to Live. 7.3 is at least 2 months away; on top of how long Feral have been struggling with this, it's starting to get quite ludicrous.\r\rI mean we're not just damage tuning here, we're tuning how the spec behaves and plays. It has been this uncomfortable for a long time now. They're really fine with tuning things on live quite often as well (look at start of 7.2.5 or start of 7.2.0) so why this has to take this long is beyond me.\r\r\rIt's like they gather only once every week where they discuss one spec in particular, so if your spec comes up as 25th, yeah, good luck with that.\r\rFeral is not the first one and not the last.\r\rAll I can say is shame on Blizzard.\r\rMore than having to wait for 7.3, its a damn shame how long it has taken them to do these changes when some have been asked for 2-3 expansions ago. And even Savage Roar duration was something asked for since 7.0 beta but it was ignored because "they knew better", well, there you go...\rFeral continued to be in such a bad spot because our players continue to claim that feral is "fine" yet those players actually rerolled to better and more solid classes. Without understanding that the spec is VERY outdated and needs a considerable overhaul on how it plays. New tier that focuses on FB and these changes will hopefully prove that, so that the class gets some attention for future expansion and certain things become baseline.

Comment by MelchiahAlex

on 2017-07-07T14:39:39-05:00

Im at a loss for words. I posted a comment on the AMA thread about these things and how they need to be adressed, and to see this response, all I can say is good job.\r\rIt is just a damn shame how long it takes for these things to make it to Live. 7.3 is at least 2 months away; on top of how long Feral have been struggling with this, it's starting to get quite ludicrous.\r\rI mean we're not just damage tuning here, we're tuning how the spec behaves and plays. It has been this uncomfortable for a long time now. They're really fine with tuning things on live quite often as well (look at start of 7.2.5 or start of 7.2.0) so why this has to take this long is beyond me.\r\r\rIt's like they gather only once every week where they discuss one spec in particular, so if your spec comes up as 25th, yeah, good luck with that.\r\rFeral is not the first one and not the last.\r\rAll I can say is shame on Blizzard.\r\rPeople notice problems and complain (rightfully so).\r\rBlizzard addresses them and people still complain. Yes, it took far longer than it should have, but it's finally being addressed. Instead of at least appreciating that, people continue to complain.\r\rYou can see the same childish behavior in comments regarding the 7.3 AK changes. Instead of appreciating that come 7.3 alts wont have to catch up to AK 40 (as if that's hard now, with the compendiums) at all, people are instead whining about the "wasted time" they put into their alts since 7.3 will make it unnecessary.\r\rThis community's propensity for whining never ceases to amaze me.\r\rAh well, I guess it's nice to at least know some things never change.

Comment by Velianaris

on 2017-07-07T15:19:50-05:00

do they know that savage roar and brutal slash on the same tier but they just said they want to keep them on different tiers...what?

Comment by TouchOfAnarchy

on 2017-07-07T15:28:43-05:00

Im at a loss for words. I posted a comment on the AMA thread about these things and how they need to be adressed, and to see this response, all I can say is good job.\r\rIt is just a damn shame how long it takes for these things to make it to Live. 7.3 is at least 2 months away; on top of how long Feral have been struggling with this, it's starting to get quite ludicrous.\r\rI mean we're not just damage tuning here, we're tuning how the spec behaves and plays. It has been this uncomfortable for a long time now. They're really fine with tuning things on live quite often as well (look at start of 7.2.5 or start of 7.2.0) so why this has to take this long is beyond me.\r\r\rIt's like they gather only once every week where they discuss one spec in particular, so if your spec comes up as 25th, yeah, good luck with that.\r\rFeral is not the first one and not the last.\r\rAll I can say is shame on Blizzard.\r\rPeople notice problems and complain (rightfully so).\r\rBlizzard addresses them and people still complain. Yes, it took far longer than it should have, but it's finally being addressed. Instead of at least appreciating that, people continue to complain.\r\rYou can see the same childish behavior in comments regarding the 7.3 AK changes. Instead of appreciating that come 7.3 alts wont have to catch up to AK 40 (as if that's hard now, with the compendiums) at all, people are instead whining about the "wasted time" they put into their alts since 7.3 will make it unnecessary.\r\rThis community's propensity for whining never ceases to amaze me.\r\rAh well, I guess it's nice to at least know some things never change.\r\rThis isn't the first time Blizzard is doing this; we of course wouldn't be outraged if this was their first or second time. But third... fourth... fifth... etc? Not thanking them for a change they should've done sooner.

Comment by Shade

on 2017-07-07T15:47:20-05:00

As a Feral... Cheers! :D

Comment by blissfire

on 2017-07-07T15:47:45-05:00

Nice changes! As a non-raider I often take sub-optimal talents if I prefer the playstyle. It's nice to know the performance gap between my choices and the optimal ones won't be so drastic. :)

Comment by Jezziut

on 2017-07-07T15:59:30-05:00

Maybe i'll be able to raid as a cat for once instead of being compelled to play resto or balance.

Comment by CornbreadPops

on 2017-07-07T16:37:35-05:00

I've played this spec for seven years... I was fine with the way it was. The rotation has become muscle memory for me oh well! I still wish savage roar would just be baked in like they did Ret old inquistion. However, I can understand why the rotation turn so many people off.

Comment by 1505947

on 2017-07-07T16:43:24-05:00

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Comment by Xeneonic

on 2017-07-07T17:01:04-05:00

This community's propensity for whining never ceases to amaze me.\r\rAh well, I guess it's nice to at least know some things never change.\rI'm not complaining that it's getting addressed. I am complaining that this isn't the first time it took this long, and since it has been going on for YEARS like this, it will also not be the last time.\r\r\rSomeone does something bad\rComplain they do something bad\r500 days later\rSomeone fixes something bad\rComplain it took them 500 days to do it\r\r\rAnd you criticize me for complaining and telling us all that all we can do is whine.\r\rDo you really think you're being reasonable?

Comment by Alugana

on 2017-07-07T17:02:31-05:00

People who don't even play feral are happy. Real ferals need help right now, our t20 set is so stupid after nerf, for example. We are again in charts bottoms.

Comment by Pentarion

on 2017-07-07T17:45:53-05:00

"We expect the current most common build\/playstyle of Jagged Wounds + Savage Roar + Bloodtalons to still remain one of the strongest builds"\r\rIn other words, we're still stuck using !@#$ty bloodtalons to do the best DPS we can. Which absolutely sucks.

Comment by jjanchan

on 2017-07-07T18:00:20-05:00

\r\rPeople notice problems and complain (rightfully so).\r\rBlizzard addresses them and people still complain. Yes, it took far longer than it should have, but it's finally being addressed. Instead of at least appreciating that, people continue to complain.\r\rYou can see the same childish behavior in comments regarding the 7.3 AK changes. Instead of appreciating that come 7.3 alts wont have to catch up to AK 40 (as if that's hard now, with the compendiums) at all, people are instead whining about the "wasted time" they put into their alts since 7.3 will make it unnecessary.\r\rThis community's propensity for whining never ceases to amaze me.\r\rAh well, I guess it's nice to at least know some things never change.\r\rAgreed. I play an Elemental shaman, which has been a challenging and unpopular spec to play for a long time. I feel like they finally got some love recently, which is great. That being said, I am happy about changes for the better, rather than finding every possible reason to gripe.\r\rNo matter what Blizzard does, there is always that player base that is eager and ready to whine. No getting away from it I guess.

Comment by oronare

on 2017-07-07T18:12:46-05:00

So because the LFR generation cannot handle a single buff and single debuff...we become babies-first-spec? Rerolling.